A strong procurement process is very important to ensure that the future project is successful, but competitive procurement can be complicated and labor intensive. You need a thorough and accurate understanding of the scope of work and requirements to ensure vendors can develop accurate proposals. At netlogx, we offer procurement support services to support and guide you throughout the entire procurement process.

First, our consultants work with client leadership to define the vision. We start with the end in mind because having a clear vision and understanding of what project success looks like is critical. The more specificity an organization can provide during the procurement process, the greater level of detail the vendors can provide in proposals. This allows more accurate proposals which represent lower risk for organizations.

To get a clear understanding of the client and their procurement needs we:

  • Review the organization’s current contracts
  • Conduct independent research
  • Perform stakeholder analysis
  • Research other organizations’ successes, failures, and approaches
  • Evaluate the organization’s available procurement vehicles (RFP, RFQ, ITB) to select the best option for that procurement

Once we have a deep understanding of the landscape, our consultants focus on developing requirements at a sufficient level of detail to allow the vendors to respond accurately. Incomplete or vague requirements make it difficult for vendors to develop thorough proposals and may result in accurate estimates of costs and schedules. Investing in requirements allows vendors to build better proposals which will more closely align with the needs of the organization.

To facilitate the evaluation process, we define critical success factors and conduct evaluation modeling exercises. These exercises allow us to identify the vendor selection factors which are most critical for the organization and weight those factors appropriately. We view these activities as critical to selecting a vendor that provides the appropriate mix of quality of approach and cost effectiveness. The evaluation process can be labor intensive, but netlogx brings a structured approach to support the evaluation team. We facilitate conversations among the team members, coordinate vendor questions and answers, and handle presentations. Our consultants also provide project management support and scheduling.

The thought of reviewing and evaluating hundreds of pages of proposals is daunting, especially when those evaluation team members all have their regular jobs to accomplish. But consultants at netlogx are here to be guides and facilitators. We can support the evaluation team to allow them to focus specifically on the assigned sections for review rather than the day-to-day minutiae of managing the procurement.

Many may view competitive procurement as a hurdle or an obstacle, but proper management and support from netlogx can be used as a tool to reduce overall project risk and lay groundwork for good project management. We can help you choose vendors that will best support your organization’s vision.